Yululate Tips: Customer Service Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

We have previously mentioned that customer service is what sets aside a business from the competition. If the customer service and customer experience is lacking, you are bound to fail despite having great products and services. We also acknowledge that no business goes out of its way to make customer experience awful. Sometimes mistakes happen.

Unfortunately intended or not, customer service mistakes are costly and can be hard to come back from. On this post, Yululate highlights some of the common customer service mistakes made by businesses. These mistakes occur when interacting with customers in person, through social media or on phone calls.

Using the Wrong or Rude Language

Language plays a very important role when delivering customer service. When it comes to word choice and intonation, customer service professionals must keep in mind to always sound friendly, agreeable and helpful. They should also always ensure they remain on brand. Support situations especially, can fail if you sound like you don’t care.

If your customers feel you are being rude, they wont come back.

Customers will hurry to end a call from a customer service agent they feel isn’t friendly. They will also not return to your restaurant or café if their waiter talks rudely to them. Using compassionate and empathetic phrases shows you care about your customers and their complaints.

Failing to Apologize

Like we said, mistakes happen and most of the times customers understand. What makes them more understanding is giving them an apology and making sure you mean it. Whether is in person or on social media ensure that you and your employees are never afraid to apologize and are sincere when you do. It doesn’t matter is you are a big bank or a small salon, when it comes to customer service, saying sorry will always be an effective way of handling unhappy customers.

KCB apologizes to customers on twitter after an incorrect message was sent to customers.

Failing To Listen To Customers

One of the biggest mistake businesses and their employees make is not listening to their customers. Customers have complained of calling a business to voice a complaint or describing their problems only for employees to prematurely offer solutions before they finish talking.

Time is money therefore businesses should never keep customers waiting. Great customer service depends on speed. Failing to respond as quickly as possible makes customers think you do not care about them or their complaints. Speed is even more important on social media as customers expect a quick response from you once they get in touch. It is also important to keep promises. If you tell your customer something will be taken care of today or tomorrow, do it. If unfortunately it isn’t possible, always apologize.

Giving Customers The Run around

Some businesses do not have an efficient system of dealing with customers so they end up frustrating them by giving them the run around. There is nothing worse than walking into an establishment to make an inquiry then you keep getting sent from one office to the other. Or calling a business then you keep getting passed on from one person to another. You might as well be handing them over to your competition.

When you keep giving them the runaround, your customers be like…(Google images)

Customer service usually comes down to having the right people doing the job. Another costly mistake businesses make is not hiring the right people and having poorly trained staff. Since they are the ones who create good or bad impressions with customers, it is important that they are well prepared to handle them and their complaints. Other mistakes made by businesses include being inaccessible to your customers, keeping poor customer records and trying to win arguments with customers.

Read up on some of the best customer service practices that help businesses keep customers and gain new ones on our blog. Do you have a customer service story you want to share? Let us know by reviewing the businesses with great or bad customer service here.